Smile Like You Mean It

Today’s tip for feeling good and creating happiness is based on sound neuroscience. Here’s the thing: Everything you do, every thought you think, every expression on your face, everything your body does without your conscious awareness — is physically represented on your brain by brain cell connecting to brain cell and forming a neural pathway. This is physical evidence of those things you do, think, feel. Because of this, everything that is psychological is always at the same time physiological.

So, when you SMILE, for instance, there is a neural pathway that is activated, not just for the muscular movement of the face, but also for the effect that the smile has on the way you think and feel. Smiling is usually associated as the result of feeling happy, but it works the other way around, too! Smiling can make you FEEL happier (Stanford University)! And guess what? It can be a fake smile, it can be a smile that is physically manipulated … just that act of turning the corners of your mouth up will do the trick. Also, smiling can actually result in a lowered heart rate and decreased stress levels (University of Kansas). Are you kidding me?!

Today’s tip for feeling good and creating happiness: SMILE! Try it out. Do it right now. Smile and hold it for ten seconds. It’s free, it’s science, it works.

Congratulations on your newest web site! I think brain science is fascinating. There’s so much going on up there without us even being aware of it. Can we consciously create new and better neural pathways that override older ones that may be destructive?